Churchill

Our friends at the Claremont Review of Books have just published their Winter number and, as usual, let me pick three reviews to preview for our readers. You can subscribe here for $19.95 and have immediate online access thrown in for free. Tributes to Harry V. Jaffa lead off the new issue. Jaffa was the guiding spirit of the CRB; the CRB calls on a handful of his former students »

Sad news from London this morning of the passing of Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill, and the author of something like 40 other books—many of them big, big books, some of them about Jewish history and the Holocaust. He began his career as a research assistant to Randolph Churchill, and after Randolph died succeeded him as the official biographer, going on to write six of the »

Our observation of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Winston Churchill yesterday put me in mind of Winston Churchill’s failed meeting with Adolf Hitler. It’s a story I’ve mentioned here before and ask your indulgence in mentioning again as the occasion warrants. Among the many qualities that made Churchill a man out of joint with his times was this one: he frequently wrote and spoke favorably of the Jews »

As we mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Churchill today, I want to pick a minor quibble that I think is not so minor after you think it through a bit. Several fine commentators, such as Victor Davis Hanson, have embraced the theme of Churchill as “the Last Lion,” borrowing from the title of William Manchester’s compulsively readable three-volume biography of Churchill. To be sure, Churchill was, like »

Always worth taking in Leo Strauss’s spontaneous remarks in class in Chicago in January 1965, upon learning the news of Churchill’s death: The death of Churchill is a healthy reminder to academic students of political science of their limitations, the limitations of their craft. The tyrant stood at the pinnacle of his power. The contrast between the indomitable and magnanimous statesman and the insane tyrant—this spectacle in its clear simplicity »

This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the passing of Winston Churchill. The most moving account of the scene comes from the Hungarian-born historian John Lukacs, who traveled from the U.S. to London to attend. It was originally published in The American Spectator years ago (but seemingly unavailable online) and then subsequently included in his fine book, Churchill: Visionary, Statesman, Historian. The Los Angeles Times, of all publications, noted this »

Bill Kristol writes in his weekly email message to readers: Many of you have asked whether, as conscientious citizens, you have to watch President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday. The answer is no. In fact, you have my complete and unambiguous permission to skip it. You might want to tune in after the speech for Joni Ernst’s GOP response–if she does well maybe we’ll include her in the »

There are a lot of myths and apocryphal stories about Churchill that can never quite be put down (such as the one that he was so drunk on one 1940 radio speech that he hired an actor to deliver it for him). The Churchill Center—you should join!—has a long list of the myths, along with links with the definitive information. My email box is exploding right now with readers wondering »

It’s Winston Churchill’s 140th birthday today. Needless to say, I doubt there will be an observance in the White House. I wonder what Sir Winston would have made of Obama? Not much. I was casting about for a passage from the great man that might apply to Obama, and came up with this fragment from an obscure essay dismissing H.G. Wells for his various unfounded resentments against Britain. It’s not »

Power Line has come into possession of a transcript of a recent telephone conversation between President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron, who, as everyone knows, has been way out in front of Obama in judging the seriousness of the problem posed by the rise of ISIS. Obama: Hey Dave, it’s Barry. How you likin’ those groovy tunes on that iPod I gave you at the G-8? Cameron: Barry! »

We conclude our preview of the Summer issue of the Claremont Review of Books today—the hundredth anniversary of the first battle of the Marne—with Algis Valiunas’s First World War essay, “On the Slaughter Bench of History.” A fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Valiunas draws on several of the numerous books released to commemorate the centennial of the outbreak of the Great War to explore the historical, cultural »

The other day I made note of Churchill’s description in a 1901 speech of what we would come to call “total war” in the 20th century. In August 1911, around the time of the Agadir crisis and when he became First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill wrote a memo critiquing the existing view of the British and French general staffs that a German offensive into France could be easily beaten »

While just about everyone caught up in Progressive-era optimism thought a general war in Europe was impossible—right up to this moment a hundred years ago—Churchill not only thought it possible, indeed likely, but anticipated its character. From one of his early speeches in the House of Commons in May 1901: “A European war cannot be anything but a cruel, heartrending struggle, which, if we are ever to enjoy the bitter »

Today is the 100th anniversary of Gavrilo Princep’s assassination of the Archduke Francis Fertinand and his consort in Sarajevo, what Churchill called “the dread signal of Armageddon.” We’re about to start a four-year palooza of commemorations of the signal episodes from the Great War, including lots of chin-stroking about whether something like it could happen again in the heart of Europe (or on the periphery, like, say, Ukraine). I offered »

Last month I presented three informal, non-credit evening lectures here at Boulder for the “Maymester” session, and a few of you (well, okay, one person, with initials T.O.) wondered whether they could be videotaped and posted here. And so here they are–but only if you really have a lot of spare time on your hands, since each one is more than an hour long, and conducted in my somewhat stream-of-consciousness »

In the editorial of the new Weekly Standard, Michael Makovsky and Bill Kristol seek to understand the frame of mind behind Obama’s deal with Iran. Winston Churchill provides the choral commentary: There’s an obvious comparison of Barack Obama to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who pursued a policy of appeasing Adolf Hitler, culminating in the Munich conference of 1938. There, Chamberlain and the French premier agreed to Hitler’s demand »

In the aftermath of the Munich Agreement Winston Churchill wrote in his November 17, 1938, column titled “The morrow of Munich,” at a time when he still occupied a backbench seat in Parliament: Mr. Chamberlain is convinced that all this will lead to general agreement; to the appeasement of the discontented Powers, and to a lasting peace. But all lies in the region of hope and speculation. A whole set »